1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to method and system for requesting opinions, information and/or analysis.
2. Related Applications
This application is related to an application entitled “A Method and System For Requesting Prior Art From the Public in Exchange for a Reward” filed concurrently herewith, the contents of which are incorporated herein in their entirety.
3. Description of the Related Art
Wall Street investors rely on receiving information and analysis of daily investment and other information to execute trades in time frames of hours or even minutes. For example, the financial community is interested in the validity of patents in making investment decisions. Similarly, the validity of patent portfolios for public companies can affect stock prices, and knowledge about the validity of patents is applicable to valuing the company that owns the patents.
When the analysis of the information requires additional information from third parties, traditional research procedures are normally employed. These procedures involve contacting a relevant third party, such as outside analyst firms or one or more individuals with specific expertise in the area of interest. The information, which is to be analyzed, is outsourced to the firm or person and a response, for example immediate feedback or an in depth analysis of the outsourced information, is returned. This process can be repeated either serially or in parallel any number of times to increase the likelihood of receiving additional information that is both accurate and timely.
However, in almost all instances, the firms and persons whom the investor can access are limited to those known to the investor and possibly known to the investor's business contacts. The process is further limited by the time constraints placed on receipt of the additional information or analysis, which imposes a limit on the number of personal contacts (and their contacts) that can be accessed to insure timely receipt. A processing approach that can be implemented, for example, involves giving the information, which is to be analyzed to an investment bank or analyst form to garner the broader resources of large institutions. As an alternative, if the information is valuable and similar analyses are replicated for the investor's overall investment arena, the investor can hire a third party research provider or an expert in the field with substantially similar credentials to provide continuing related information or analysis. The above-mentioned procedures are useful in obtaining high quality people to provide on time and high quality analysis of various topics. However, these traditional research approaches have the limitations of predefined accessible contacts and time constraints.
Third party research providers accessed by investors have attempted to solve this limitation by gathering together a pool of experts in various disciplines to provide their subscribing investors with access to these individuals for consultation on information within their field of expertise on a timely basis. These sources of information and the analysis they provide increase the odds that the investor will receive high quality information. However, this traditional structure is limited to consultants who do not participate directly in the market determined value of the information they provide nor the market determined revenues of the information exchange.
In some instances members of the public have been requested to send relevant information to a central source, in this case, a company, which was sued for patent infringement. More particularly, Netscape presented a request on a web site which it hosts called mozilla.org (the text is available as of Feb. 10, 2000 at http://www.mozilla.org/legal/wangsuit.html) for prior art to defend against a patent infringement action by Wang (based on U.S. Pat. No. 4,751,669). The request was therefore made available to visitors of Netscape's mozilla.org web site. Visitors were asked to respond by providing prior art to invalidate the patent claims on a gratuitous basis. As of Feb. 10, 2000, Netscape reported that the case settled. The payment to the consultants who responded either was gratuitous or a fixed fee.
Another company, Bounty Quest, had a web site offering payments to those who can prove or disprove patent claims and providing a means to settling patent disputes between companies. The company hoped to exploit the concerns of those who feel that the US Patent Office is failing to serve the new economy. Bounty Quest encouraged scientists, engineers, professional researchers or any people with specialized knowledge to find evidence critical to issues of patent validity and share this information with companies involved in patent disputes. Bounty Quest essentially created a human search engine of knowledgeable “Bounty Hunters” who tracked down this type of fugitive information for fixed cash rewards. Bounty Quest rewards started at $10,000 and went higher than $1 million, depending on the value of the information as predetermined and set forth as a fixed monetary amount in the “bounty”.